Smile!
by RusNydia
Summary: "Did you know that when you were a baby, you didn't cry little Severus? You never cried but you were always frowning. You are always frowning little Severus and that's the problem! See you have to smile—smile nice and big for mommy!" Bruce/Joker!Severus.
1. Laughter

Hey you guyyys… I've been away for a little while. Betcha never even noticed! So, Smile has been revamped… yay? I'm really sorry it had to go but I didn't like it. This is the same story, just a little different.

(**)

Tommy Hessen was eight years old. His birthday was just yesterday and he had gotten several gifts, one of which was an awesome bucket and shovel. He and his friends and several kids he didn't know were having a contest to see which group could build the biggest castle. He and his group were totally going to win because of his awesome new bucket and shovel. In mid-laughter as another tower fell from the opposing team's castle, Tommy turned his head and spotted him.

It was that boy, the freaky one that stroke fear in every kid's heart as he walked slowly into the playground and sat upon a swing.

He stared solemnly ahead, eyes blacker than night but far from blank. In fact, his eyes glittered with intelligence and a sort of calculation that was unnatural in anyone under thirty. They took in everything around him from behind a curtain of greasy black locks that tangled in some places, curled slightly in others or hung lank. He was absolutely filthy looking although he did not smell as he looked with his ill-fitting clothing and dirty hair. Instead he smelled, as most would put it, like fire. Tommy understood it to be true even though it made no sense. The black haired boy smelled as though he were standing in the middle of a great, roaring fire and it absorbed into his skin, sunk into his soul.

If that wasn't disturbing enough, the boy never said anything. He would come to the playground every day, at the same time and position his skinny body on a swing and simply sit there. He wouldn't speak to anyone, he wouldn't look longingly for a friend and he wouldn't actually swing on the swing. At first they attempted to speak with him, they really did. However the boy would meet them with his calculating onyx eyes and stare. He would stare hard into their eyes, never blinking and never speaking. He wouldn't allow them to look away as his entire body stilled and he looked into their very soul and if they ever got away, they would cry like he had actually struck them and some even peed themselves.

Tommy had gone up to him twice, had braved the boy twice and never let his friends live it down when they complained about imagined monsters because no matter what anyone said, monsters were real but they weren't under beds or in closets. They didn't hide in the dark. They came to the playground to sit on the swing. They looked just like the rest of them but smelled like an undying fire.

Tommy remembered looking into those eyes, staring into them, unable to look away but unwilling to continue their contest. It was only the second time that he tried to communicate that Tommy realized that what had been building up in his chest, the fear and the panic hadn't really been tears, it had been… well, he couldn't describe it. It was like laughter, like he wanted to scream with laughter until he was crying but it would still be laughter because something was funny and horrifying and funny. But Tommy couldn't and didn't do that because they would call him loony. So he smiled at the boy and continued to play with his friends until it was naptime. Then he buried his face into his pillow and laughed his crazy laughter until he fell asleep, still laughing.

Tommy Hessen did not remember the one time someone tried to bully the boy because he wasn't there—had the chickenpox he did—but his best friend, Billy had been there. The squirrelly boy told him how the bully had come storming into the playground, chest puffed and obviously a new kid. It didn't take a genius to guess that whatever had happened had ended in absolute disaster. His first target had been the little boy on the swing, probably because he was alone.

Billy didn't go into too much detail, his short attention span never allowed it but from what Tommy heard, the boy had made eye contact with the bully when he attempted to grip the boy up by his shirt. He made eye contact and froze like a statue then the bully dropped the boy and ran. He ran and he wasn't screaming. He was laughing so loud and hard that it sounded like shrill shrieks of agony.

Normally Tommy would have called Billy a liar (despite his own reaction to the boy), he was quite known for that but then Billy would look at him with serious green eyes, no longer twitchy and smiling and Tommy knew that he wasn't lying. Whatever the little boy had done to that bully had been a harsher version of what he had done to Tommy and it scared Tommy sometimes when he really thought about it.

Before the brown haired boy could pull his thoughts away from the strange solemn boy across the playground gazing about with his glittering eyes, he saw something he hadn't seen in quite some time (since he was six). There was someone approaching the boy. And not just anyone but a girl. She had bright, fiery red hair tied up in pretty green ribbons that matched her pretty green dress. She flounced up to the boy with a sparkling smile on his face, stopping right in front of him like a ball of sunshine trying to brighten up a hall of darkness.

"Oh my—somebody should get her out of there! He's gonna eat her," Glenn Tilly whispered which brought the scene to everyone else's attention.

"She must be new," Glenda noted, her eyes gleaming delightfully as though what her brother said meant absolutely nothing. She too had flounced up to the black haired boy and actually spoke to him, managed to introduce herself before something overtook her and she ran without speaking to her friends. Since that day, she hardly stopped smiling.

"Yeah, she's Lily Evans, her family just moved in last week—my mum works with her da and her mum works with my older sister," Terra Rocky piped up, working some grains between her fingers as she watched the scene from behind her golden hair. She hadn't gone up to the boy because she fancied herself something of a genius. Or, if not a genius then at least someone with a good sense of self-preservation.

"Sssh, I'm trying to watch!" Tommy hissed, waving off the chattering children. He wanted to see what kind of reaction this girl would have to the monster that smelled of fire and looked like a normal little boy.

"Hi, my name's Lily! I just moved here from London, I did. My mum got a new, better job down here so we all had to move. I was gonna play in the sandbox but then I saw you were here all alone and I didn't want ya to be all alone so now I'm here and… and…" her words stuttered off slightly and she took a small step back as the glittering, calculating eyes finally turned towards her and connected with her sparkling greens. Tommy couldn't see her expression from this angle but he could only assume that it was frozen as she became a statue for whatever amount of time the monster forced her—

"And my sister…" Or until she broke the spell herself. More than just Tommy's mouth fell open as the girl continued to chatter as though nothing had happened or would happen. From their distance, they could see that the boy seemed slightly confused as well, a slight furrow in his brow as the girl sat down next to him, talking a mile a minute all the while looking him in the face.

"… older than me. She's already ten, she is! Ohhhhh, there she is, coming right there. HEY TUNIE!" Lily waved, kicking herself on the swing so that she could go higher.

"Lily, I told you not to run off now c'mon before da goes loony!" another girl they had never seen came striding into the playground. Compared to her sister, this girl was completely plain and downright boring with her brown hair, brown eyes and dark blue dress. Her hair held no ribbons and she did not sparkle but she stalked right up to where her sister swung, barely casting a glance at the little boy sitting there, feeling no need to stare into his calculating eyes and test her luck. She did not fear him or, if she did, she ignored it in favor of her sister.

"Awww Tunie, we're right by a playground!" Lily whined, still kicking herself higher and higher. The older girl pursed her lips and placed her hands onto her hips as mothers want to do.

"Lily Rosaline Evans, you get off that swing right now or I'm gonna tell Aunt Helen!" the brunette threatened. Lily gasped and immediately released her grip on the metal chains. As she twirled elegantly through the air some would say that she actually flew, that she had gone much higher than any of them ever had. She landed with hardly a thump or a hair out of place. Her older sister immediately gripped her by the hand and practically dragged her away, the redhead turning around to wave to the black haired boy.

Tommy turned his head back to said boy and saw that the confused look on his face had smoothed out and now he looked as though he understood everything and he waved back.

(**)

Two Weeks Later

"You still haven't told me your name and we've been friends for ages now," Lily said as she bit thoughtfully into her apple. Across from her, the boy was doing the same thing although he was taking much smaller bites and wasn't really looking at her. Instead he took in everything around them, cataloguing it and moving onto something different. He did it quickly over and over again before staring at her really hard, looking into her eyes then gazing over her face then her body before going back to their surroundings.

He was an odd sort of fellow, he truly was but something about him drew her in almost like when the voices in her blood told her she could and should do something like jump really high or bring a flower back to life or fix a kitty's paw. She liked and trusted that voice and so she always listened to it even when it told her that the group of kids wouldn't be as better as this single boy with the ill-fitting clothes and dirty hair.

"Actually, you've haven't said anything to me. I don't know what your voice sounds like, I don't," Lily continued. "Can you talk?"

The boy finished looking around and slowly looked at her from behind the curtain of hair, glittering eyes staring at her. There was something about his stare, something that twisted something inside her, something that the voice in her blood enjoyed quite much. It told her that if it hadn't been there, then she'd be giggling instead of it and the way that it said this, Lily figured that she didn't want to giggle because of his gaze.

"Yes," he suddenly said, breaking the redhead's train of thought. Lily blinked in confusion then smiled as she remembered her earlier question. His voice was nice if she had to comment, small and kinda rough as though he didn't talk much but it was nice.

"Good on you, I thought we were going to play charades if you couldn't talk," Lily smiled, "So what's your name?"

"Severus Snape," he answered easily.

"I never heard of a name like that, I haven't but I like it. How old are you?"

"Two weeks from eight."

"Oh, I'm nine so that means I'm older than you. Haha!" Lily playfully stuck out her tongue. Severus raised a bemused eyebrow and watched as the girl bounced giddily and clapped her hands together, probably excited how much she was learning about him.

"You're a witch," Severus suddenly stated something that had been on his mind since he allowed this redhead to come into his domain. He truly did like her, she had enough energy and enough words for the both of them and she had magic just like him. Yes, she was older but that mattered very little because his birthday fell right into Hogwarts' birth date limit.

"Hm, are you being mean Sev?" Severus frowned deeply at the butchering of his name but bit his tongue from saying anything. While the redheaded twins had some magic, they didn't have nearly as much as this girl and couldn't handle when he used his own brand of magic so if Lily wanted to give him a… nickname… then he supposed it wouldn't be so bad.

"No, you are a witch. You do magic like when you jumped off the swing and flew. I do magic too but I'm a wizard," he explained in more words than he ever used. Ever. He held up his apple in one hand and slowly extended his magic as his mother had taught him, forcing it into the apple and causing it to melt red and white down his hand only to land on the ground to sprout a rather crude flower.

"Magic," Lily whispered in awe. She had done magic, she knew that it was magic but to see someone else do it, to know that she wasn't alone… Lily smiled brightly and tackled Severus to the grass, rolling playfully, her laughter bouncing off the trees.

(**)

To Be Continued

Did it get worse or better? I'm hoping better…


	2. Smiling

Two chapters in one? Psh, who am I kidding, I should be posting like fifteen hundred for how long it took me to even return to this wondering site. Oh yeah, I don't own anything. Forgotten Disclaimer... please don't sue me. I don't own a single character.

(**)

Tiny. Weird. Scary.

Those were the better adjectives that described his person or at least that's what the neighborhood kids and their parents said behind their hands. It… confused him if he was honest. He hadn't actually done anything to deserve their words, not that they hurt him. It was just confusing as to what problem they had with him and if they really thought that he didn't hear them or see when they crossed to the other side of the street.

Severus wasn't stupid, in fact he was called a genius by several doctors. He amazed the doctors with how much he observed with a casual glance around and his impeccable memory was something to be feared according to his mother. Severus frowned deeply and strode into the kitchen as he heard humming coming from the kitchen. That was odd. His mother was actually in there, mixing a cauldron of liquid that he was sure was meant to be a calming draught.

"Hello my little Severus!" his mother cooed upon noticing him in her domain. Severus quirked a brow but said nothing. It seemed that his mother was in another one of her moods but he found it much better than the times where she would collapse in a chair, body twisted and slumped into an odd position, not moving a single inch except to breathe. Those days saw him spending more time outside and hardly eating anything as he wasn't really hungry normally and she wouldn't accept food in that still, still state.

Hm, he supposed that now was the time for her to come out of it but she seemed to be ready to enter another collapse. Her movements were jerky and quick. Her humming, though light, was stilted in places as she continue to look over both shoulders as though hearing something that she just couldn't quite see. He stepped further into the kitchen, glad when her attention snapped to him for a brief moment before returning to her task. She hadn't attacked him yet.

Severus silently grabbed a stepping stool, dragging it over to the stove where his mother hadn't noticed that the potion was slowly bubbling over with each stir she made. He gently grabbed her hand in his smaller, paler one. Her skin had a gray tinge to it and Severus wrinkled his nose as he noticed just how bad she smelled. She hadn't bathed in weeks and he could see it in her tangled, greasy hair and equally dirty face.

"Mum, you are stirring it too fast," he murmured. She jerked in his hold but didn't lash out. Instead she blinked and looked at the overflowing potion to realize that her little boy was correct.

"Thank you little Severus. That entire batch would have been worthless but oh, I have so much work to catch up with! The Ministry wants truth serums, antidotes, and quickening elixirs. The hospital is no better with their lists that continue to be longer and longer," the woman threw up her hands in exasperation and began to pace the floor, her legs and arms jolting unnaturally. Severus sighed and turned down the heat so the potion wouldn't be burned on the bottom seeing as she had forgotten.

Even though she was talking properly, it was obvious that she was still out of it as she had been for the better part of a month. This was the first time she had said nary a word to him, even when he was hand feeding her once he came to the conclusion that she wouldn't feed herself and definitely wouldn't cook. It had been rather hard but he wouldn't complain because he had enough money to make it by and he knew that she would eventually come back to herself.

"I already made your potions for the Ministry and St. Mungo's and I have started on your new list and only have two batches of burn ointments left," Severus told the woman, stepping into her path. The potions were actually solidifying in his room which he had barred his mother from with a simple lock she wouldn't be bothered with when she was having an episode.

Alyssa pulled herself to a stop and looked down at her son with calculating, cruel eyes that actually reminded Severus of his own eyes but then she was smiling and pulling him into a hug tight enough that he suspected he would have bruises for the next day or so. Of course he didn't pull away because it wasn't often she remembered that he was there to be her child and not her caretaker so when she did remember…

"You are too good for me little Severus, too good for your crazy ole mum," she murmured into his dirty hair. Severus didn't reply, instead he shifted into her hug until he could see her at least partially enough to look into her dirty face.

"Why do the other kids fear me?" Severus inquired to get off the topic of insanity. If they stayed on it too long, his mother would lash out and begin to believe that he was against her and Severus didn't want that, not now. Alyssa stared at him for several moments, simply studying his face before she laughed loud and deep, pushing him away from her almost too roughly.

"Did you know that when you were a baby, you didn't cry little Severus?" she tilted her head, "Not to say that you smiled either. You never cried but you were always frowning. You are always frowning little Severus and that's the problem! See you have to smile—smile nice and big for mommy!"

Alyssa demonstrated what she wished from her son by pulling her lips back from her teeth and giving him a huge… snarl. It wasn't pretty and he was sure that that would only make the children think him insane. Besides she was wrong—there wasn't a way that the children and parents of this neighborhood were frightened of him because he chose not to make stupid movements with his mouth.

Suddenly his mother was back in his personal space, her fingers hooking into his mouth to yank him forward, nails ripping into the inside of his cheeks. Severus let out a hiss of pain and it was only by a single stroke of luck that his mother didn't find herself flying backwards but it was close call. He could feel his magic trying to protect him but he wouldn't allow it to hurt his mother. No, never but he couldn't stop it from warning her with slight sparks along his skin. As though she couldn't feel the crackle of young magic grazing her body, she pulled the corner of his lips until they were in a rather bad parody of a smile.

"C'mon little Severus. There you go, a smile for mummy!" Alyssa grinned harder and thus pulled at the corners of Severus's mouth to match hers, "Little Severus you're SMILING! Smile, smile, smile!"

"You are hurting me," Severus gurgled through her hold but still did not fight her. She blinked her dark, dark eyes at him as though she wasn't too sure who he was or, more likely, what she was doing. He released a pained whimper as one of her nails pierced the wet flesh and immediately realization dawned on her. Her eyes widened and she threw herself away from the small boy, nearly braining herself on the table top then she was scrambling back on her knees, pulling him into a hug that was tight but not enough to add to the bruises he would already have.

"I am so sorry Sev," she whimpered into his neck, moisture landing on his neck singling that she was crying. Her body shook with great sobs as she mumbled apology after apology into his skin. Severus sighed deeply and swallowed the blood welling into his mouth as he gave her a sharp pat on the back.

"It is all right mother. Go upstairs and take a bath while I start dinner. It'll be your favorite, Shepard's Pie," the boy encouraged and he attempted to move his lips into a smile but it fell before it could even begin to bloom.

Alyssa sniffled and slowly released her son, guilt making her footsteps slow and careful. She didn't remember much from the past… well, she wasn't sure how much she actually remembered and how much was simple imagination but she hadn't meant to hurt her little boy either physically and mentally! But she was, she was hurting him even if he didn't say anything against her.

Deep in her heart, Alyssa knew that her son had been working himself to the bone during her time of mental absence, had probably gone as far as doing her work for her so that they could continue to have money and she would still have her job but no kid should ever have to do that. She was the mother and yet it was her that had to be comforted and her son that had to be the adult and 'get over it'.

If only her former husband could see her now. Alyssa let out a disgusted snort—he would kill her and sneak Severus away so quickly she wouldn't know what hit her but… Alyssa played with the water surrounding her and quickly becoming dirty. She would do better by her baby, she would. She wouldn't let anyone take Severus away from her because he meant the world to her. She loved Severus more than anything in this entire world, would give her life just to be perfect for him. Alyssa bit her lip to hold back the tears… she only hoped that her somber little boy knew that much.

Downstairs, Severus waited until he could no longer hear his mother's footsteps before he turned to the stove and lugged the large cauldron off the small flame. It was done although would be a bit strong so he would have to write a small note to St. Mungo's and the Ministry before sending it off but that would have to wait for a bit because he had dinner to start. Perhaps if his mother was finished early with her bath, she would help him.

Severus used his step stool to reach the sink, wanting to cook with clean hands and caught sight of his reflection.

"Smile, big and nice." A voice whispered, sounding much like his mother's. Severus frowned deeper and turned away from the window.

He had dinner to prepare.

(**)

To Be Continued

This chapter was short but I found it important enough to not make it seem like a side chapter.


	3. Side Chapter: Attempt Dos

Interlude

Yeah, I'm doing these

(**)

"You know, you really should do it Sev, I'm sure you would look gorgeous," Lily commented quite suddenly, staring at her best friend. The black haired boy was sitting quietly in the corner of their compartment, large book on his lap although he looked up from it every now and again. Somehow he managed to keep up his break neck reading speed, flipping the pages almost before she could even finish the first sentence.

"Lily, while I do quite enjoy your surprise statements, it is not convenient when you wish for me to change," Severus drawled back without taking his eyes off his book, flipping the page with one long fingered hand. They'd been friends for two years now and they had both gotten into Hogwarts despite Severus still being ten years old. In the time they'd been friends, they had gotten to know each other much more and Severus was beginning to come out of his shell day by day even though it was mostly to cut people with his newly discovered razor sharp tongue. Lily had yet to truly be on the end of such tongue but he slipped in insults every now and again.

"I never want you to change Severus, you're perfect the way you are," Lily countered, able to keep her face straight despite how hard she was lying. It wasn't that there was something wrong with Severus, everyone was made the way God intended as her mother always said and yet…

"Careful Lily, your nose may start to grow," Severus flipped another page.

"Oh stop it, silly. Anyway, I think you should smile more often or… ever. I don't think you've so much as cracked a grin in my presence," Lily stated. Severus stopped moving the pages of his book and slowly turned his eyes towards her, staring so deep into her eyes, she was sure that he was attempting to look into her soul. It was completely unnerving how very still he got and how still it made her. Her chest clinched and it tickled something in the back of her mind, that little voice that told her to do magic laughed and laughed and laughed but Lily didn't. Instead she continued to look into those unnerving eyes until the boy finally broke away and looked out the window silently.

"… okay, maybe not."

(**)

Failed attempt Number Two at making Sev smile…


End file.
